March 4, 2014 | Quote
Obama’s Weakness Makes Wars More Likely
Among the academic set from which President Obama springs, everyone agrees that wars are the result of “arrogance” and bullying by the United States. So concerned was then-Sen. Obama about the potential for U.S. aggression that he declined to vote for 2007 legislation that would have designated Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization.
The IRGC had been involved in training and arming terrorists worldwide, particularly in Lebanon (Hezbollah) but also in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Palestinian territories. But Obama worried that such a vote would be “saber rattling.”
Our standing in the “world community” (an oxymoron to beat all oxymorons) and our credibility had been badly damaged by just such bellicosity, Obama argued. His administration would deploy “soft power” and diplomacy to make the world safer and more peaceful.
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First, as Claudia Rosett of Forbes writes, the pattern of talks we're engaged in with Iran is identical to what we did with North Korea: “The pattern was one of procedural triumphs … followed by Pyongyang's reneging, cheating, pocketing the gains and concessions won at the bargaining table, and walking away.”